I love the Vista unzip dialog. Just two steps to unzip a file. Although XP first added the unzip to Windows, it was crudely done. It always went through the wizard which had three pages to add to the misery the check setting to ‘Show extracted files’ never remembered its previous state.

What’s even more interesting is this comment left by a guy called Stan on Scobles blog.

Winer is either completely ignorant or is just playing the “MS just copies” role for effect.

Here are some MS innovations off the top of my head (some big, some small, some built on top of previous work, but lots of “innovations” in tech build on previous work):* AJAX* Web browser component usable by any app* OLE* Spreadsheet Pivot Tables* Tabbed spreadheets (since then, copied by other apps such as browsers)* On-the-fly spell check in word processors* LINQ (the upcoming tech that will be in C# 3.0 and VB9)* Video codec innovations that have led to VC-1 being the premier codec for HD-DVD and BR discs.* Mouse scroll wheels* Mouse GoForward/GoBack buttons* Ergonomic mice (I recall the days where you had to press down on a mouse while moving it in order to move the cursor; Microsoft ended that nonsense).* Ergonomic keyboards* Office 2007 UI* Mac Office floating palette UI* TerraServer (precursor of Virtual Earth, NASA WorldWind, Google Earth)* Ability to alter compiled code while debugging it* User Agents* Wizards* Intellisense* Answer Wizard technology in Office Help* ClearType* TrueType (collaboration with Apple)* Bob (yeah, it failed in the marketplace, but it was innovative (too much for its own good))* Dynamic HTML desktops* Taskbar* Alt-Tab to switch apps* Lots of small innovations in .NET that when combined equal large cumulative innovation.* ActiveX (yes, it had security issues, particularly before XP SP2, but is great in an intranet setting)* Net-DDE, the first tech to allow clipboard functionality over LAN* Singularity* Combining the Back and Forward history buttons into one navigation stack control in IE7* Photosynth* XPS (does everything that PDF does, adds graphical effects that PDF lacks, does it in a smaller file size, and does it using XML so the files can be manipulated via XML parsers)* Windows Live Contacts (being developed by Danny Thorpe (legendary programmer at Borland, who jumped to Google, then 4 months later went to Microsoft))* A bunch of little stuff in IM via MSN Messenger* OneNote (I don’t think there’s any other app really like it (and those that try to be like it aren’t anywhere near as good), particuarly when used on a Tablet PC)* Mac Word 2004’s notebook layout and microphone support* Zune’s WiFi (yes, the RIAA only allowed 3play/3day sharing, but its use will grow into other areas)* First console to have a harddrive (Xbox)* Browser runs in a sandbox (IE7 on Vista)* First browser with anti-phishing tech* Multi-core/CPU calculations in Excel 2007* XNA* Vista’s ability to allow the user to increase RAM simply by plugging in a USB 2.0 flash drive* First OS to support delayed clipboard rendering* First OS to have a 3D Sound api for games* Shadow Copy* Media Center Extenders (which iTV looks to be a copy of)

Another program from my ‘Must Have’ folder. KeePass stores all my privata logins in a safe, secure encrypted file. It’s open-source, so it’s free as well. The features I love the most are the quick search text box as well as the macro play-back. For example I simply need to navigate to my VSS entry on KeePass and press Ctrl+V to have it run a macro that starts VSS Admin and logs me into the server. This is how the macro looks:

Microsoft this week announced the licensing of the Office 2007 User Interface (i.e. the Ribbon bar) to the partner community. The licensing is royalty free, anyone who wants to develop an application with the new UI needs to sign up on the web.

I didn’t really believe that Microsoft would let every Tom, Dick and Harry copy their new patented UI. Reading into the article you find the catch though ‘The license is available for applications on any platform, except for applications that compete directly with the five Office applications’. There you have it. The master stroke. The Open Office guys who have been aping Microsoft Office for so long are stuck in an island now. Unless they can out-innovate on the user interface these guys are pretty much stuck in the 1990’s UI world.

Or just two on this occassion. But man what a tool, Filemon and Regmon have been mashed-up into one. Better yet not just a mashup it has been written from the ground up and includes a number of enhancements.

In general the new Gmail Mobile promises to let you do nearly everything with Gmail that you can do from your computer. To install Gmail Mobile, direct your mobile web browser to www.gmail.com/app. [TechCrunch]